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Susan Blackmore

Dr. Susan Blackmore is a researcher of consciousness and what she calls “extraordinary human experience,” which includes experiences often referred to as “paranormal,” including out of body experiences and alien abduction. She has a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey, where she studied ESP and memory and eventually gave up belief in the paranormal and adopted a more skeptical worldview.

Blackmore was an important influence for me a few years ago when I was giving up on practicing magick because she had been through the same thing studying ESP: she researched it for years and determined that there wasn’t evidence to support her hypothesis. But she remained interested in “extraordinary human experience,” and showed me that it was possible to research and examine these issues from an open minded and respectful yet skeptical way. Blackmore considers these experiences an important part of the human condition worthy of our study and consideration, regardless of whether the causes are paranormal, psychological or neurological.

Apart from her ESP research, Blackmore is best known for developing Richard Dawkins’ idea of memes (which is a bit more involved than the terms’ common usage on the Internet today) in her book The Meme Machine.

Blackmore also speaks frequently on the topic of Zen and wrote the book 10 Zen Questions. She considers herself a practitioner of Zen but not of Buddhism.